I’ve had some good publicity around the publication of the new editions of Damn Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45 and Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the ’45. The Sunday Post did an excellent full-page spread, written by Tracey Bryce and using one of my favourite paintings of Jacobite Times to illustrate it. Susan...
Last year I realized that this year, 2022, would be the 25th anniversary of the first publication of Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45. I approached the publisher, Penguin Random House, and suggested a special edition to mark this milestone. I’m delighted to say that the new edition will be available from...
This moving poem is by my friend Nimmou Nilakantan. We got to know each other at the school gates back in the mid 1980s when we were both young mums. Our sons met in the classroom as wee boys and were soon best buddies. Nimmou, her husband Nila and their two lads were in...
One Week in April: The Scottish Radical Rising of 1820 was launched on 2nd April 2020. All sorts of live events were planned for the bicentenary of the Rising, (also known as the Radical War). One which went ahead was the inaugural Paisley Book Festival. I treasure my lanyard as a reminder of live events...
Very pleased to have been asked by the lovely and dedicated Inverness Outlanders to speak about some of the women I wrote about in Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45 at an online event. The third Inverness Outlanders LIVE online show happens this coming Tuesday, 23rd February at 7pm on...
The Battle of Falkirk Muir, also known as the second Battle of Falkirk, was fought on 17th January 1746 and was a victory for the Jacobite army of Prince Charles Edward Stuart over their Hanoverian adversaries of the British army. The battle was fought in a tempest of rain and wind, as illustrated in...
Very pleased to have published two books this year, one non-fiction and one novel. Thrilled that the Scotsman newspaper included One Week in April: The Scottish Radical Rising of 1820 in their supplement Scottish Books of 2020. Currently writing the third novel in the Storm over Scotland series. Many thanks to all readers...
The Great Fire of Edinburgh of 1824 broke out on 15th November of that year and raged over the next four days and nights. It’s thought to have been started by a candle someone forgot to blow out when they left their business premises late in the afternoon. Thirteen people died, hundreds had to...
Two hundred years ago this month, on 8th September 1820, two men were hanged and then beheaded in Broad Street, Stirling. They were John Baird, aged 38, and Andrew Hardie, aged 28. Found guilty of treason at what can only be called a show trial, their crime had been their involvement in the Scottish...
‘Did ye ever see sic a crowd, Tammas?’ James Wilson, a weaver from Strathaven, a man who had harmed nobody, was put to death on Glasgow Green on Wednesday 30 August 1820 for his short-lived participation in the Scottish Radical Rising of that year. As the Glasgow Herald reported, it was a fine...